Citi Beats Bank Of America At One Thing: Getting Bailout Money

The Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the TARP program has finally made public the data on exactly how much each of the various bailed-out banks received from the combined coffers of TARP, FDIC and the Federal Reserve. The winner: Citigroup’s $476.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Bank of America, which is currently thumping the living heck out of Citi in the first round of our Worst Company In America tournament, was the runner-up with a supersized total of $336.1 billion.

Lagging far behind in third place was Morgan Stanley, which only received $135 billion from the federal sources.

“Very large financial institutions may now rationally decide to take inflated risks because they expect that, if their gamble fails, taxpayers will bear the loss,” reads the Oversight Committee’s report. “Ironically, these inflated risks may create even greater systemic risk and increase the likelihood of future crises and bailouts. In addition, Treasury’s intervention in the automotive industry, rescuing companies that were not banks and were not particularly interconnected within the financial system, extended theâ€•too big to fail guarantee and its associated moral hazard to non-financial firms.”